mgo.licio.us

"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Softball Regional Preview

Michigan received a #10 National Seed for this weekend's NCAA Softball Tournament. In the Ann Arbor Regional is Western Michigan, Notre Dame and Kentucky.

The Softball tourney uses a double elimination format, which in my opinion, is the fairest because if a team has a bad hair day, they can still come back and win.

The National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) has chosen JT, Ashley Lane, Amanda Chidester and Bree Evans as First Team Selections.

Western Michigan University Broncos (25-28, 14-6 MAC). WMU received an automatic bid by winning the MAC softball title It is the first title since 2003. WMU came from behind and took 2 from the Ohio Bobcats for the title.

They had some embarrassing losses. They lost to the College of Charleston (5-3), and to Central Connecticut (5-3). They had a few quality wins against Notre Dame (3-2) and Loyola-Marymount (4-3).

In the game against us, MAC MVP M Whitney was the WMU pitcher. We jumped all over her. Colie and Ashley had 3 hit apiece. Stephanie and Hilary split the pitching duties.

Summary: WMU have not seen JT yet this year, they will regret it too as JT pitches a 6 inning mercy rule win. Blue Dragon will have to dig deep into the archives to find a suitable post.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish (45-9, 19-1 Big East) ND received an At-Large Bid to the Tourney, ND finished 1st in the regular season and was #1 seed in the conference tournament. However, #5 seed Louisville knocked ND out of the tourney by a score of 6-0 in the semi-finals. Syracuse would eventually defeat Louisville for the Conference Championship.

Kentucky is a streaky team. They lose to ranked Stanford 4-2, but takes 2 out of 3 from Tennessee and 3 straight from Florida. KU had 2 embarrassing losses to Memphis (L 3-2) and South Carolina (L 4-3)

Summary: Kentucky has the pitching to go the distance in Rachel Riley. She can flat out pitch. They have shown that they can beat anyone at any time. But they will certainly have to bring their "A" game to beat JT and Michigan.

It's not that the committee "doesn't care for the Big Ten," after all, Penn State is hosting a regional despite probably not even deserving a tournament bid.

Last year, Michigan was #5 in RPI but got a #2 national seed because Michigan might have had the most difficult non-conference schedule in the nation--they played 16 games against teams ranked in the top 25.

This year, Michigan was #10 in RPI and got a #10 national seed because Michigan probably had the easiest schedule of any ranked team. Instead of 16 games against top-25 teams, they played 4 this year.

There really turned out not to be too much difference between a #10 seed and a #7 seed, though, because Michigan will host the next round if they win their regional--#7 California can't play NCAA tournament games at their home field.

The Big Ten just doesnt have the talent to be considered a "Top" conference. The Big Ten overall is not attractive for the good players. Most of the great players come from Cali, Az, Tx, and the southeast region.

Sure there are diamonds in the rough all over the country, but the vast majority of great players come from warm weather states. It is tough to pull these kids to the mid west (Big Ten) when most of these girls have NEVER had a snow day. Michigan, ND, NW and to some extent tosu have drawing power independant of the cold weather.

I agree that Penn State is a suprise to get in but I would guess that geography had more to do with the selection than performance. They needed a school to host a regional in the east. This makes travel easier.

Now that is not to say that every kid from cold weather are bad ball players. I coach against teams from the U.P. (Gladstone and Esconaba). Those girls play ball all year long. They dont have soccer, volleyball or basketball to speak of that can pull the kids away.

Those kids play ball indoor all year long. It is fun to watch those Upers play ball at a high level. Most of those kids go to warm weather schools though just to get the hell out of dodge.

I don't think we really disagree here. Michigan had a weak schedule, so they didn't get a good seed. I think we are both saying that. In order to get a top-8 seed, Michigan has to play several games against SEC, Big 12 and Pac Ten teams in the early non-conference portion of the schedule. We didn't manage to do that this year, and so the NCAA's formula worked against us, unlike last year.

Geography is not supposed to influence who get selected to participate in the tournament, it only influences who is chosen to host. Penn State got in for some reason other than geography. I guess we would have to ask Penn State's coach, who by an amazing coincidence is on the selection committee. I wish them the best, but Illinois and North Carolina, who both have wins against Penn State as well as a better RPI, might not be so charitable.

Michigan has proven in the past, and will prove again, that there is plenty of softball talent in the snow belt. Let's hope they prove it this year.

The weather is 70 and sunny in AA so we will be styling. Too bad that you cant make it. The games will be on ESPN. I have an open thread from the game with my laptop so if you cant watch it on TV, you can get updates on your MGoBlog Smart Phone.